The four men stood up and readied their weapons. They were now fully on guard against Uriel’s power, this mist, which concealed not hidden foes but countless blades. What should’ve been an instant victory had transformed into a troublesome fight in the eyes of both sides.

“Do not underestimate her, keep an eye on her limbs at all times, assume even her fingers are a trigger for that attack!” Erus cried as Uriel attacked once again.

She didn’t even need to gesture, she just willed it and blades came into form, but the men reacted better this time. They countered the blades that formed efficiently and without a hint of their earlier carelessness.

Three of the men evaded the attacks while one of them outright parried the one that was aimed at him and charged swiftly forward. Uriel’s young figure remained firmly locked onto in that man’s eye.

The Lieutenant advanced upon her. Then, in that instant, a shadow poked through the mist. The man panicked as the shadow took form and then plunged a lance through his heart.

The shadow, now clear to the eye of everyone present, was a soldier of Mercury who’d hidden inside the mist.

Uriel snapped her fingers before the skewered lieutenant could recover and with that gesture she invoked a deadly strike. The mist around the man closed in and hardened to a ball, it crushed him until it became as small as it could go.

The whole thing only took a moment’s time to occur and naught but a football sized mass remained of the unfortunate man from then on. The man’s regeneration simply had no way to save him when his body was attacked in that manner.

The rest of the men were shaken to their very cores by the scene, they then turned with frozen spines towards the girl as the loud and high pitched sound of her shoes tapping on the wooden floor met their ears.

“Regeneration is a staple of our, of Cain’s, greatest enemy,” She said, “Don’t assume it’ll save you from me, or any of my men, we know how to counter it.” She snapped her fingers again and then the walls and ceiling around them collapsed in a flash to reveal men and women clad in armour formed of Ash.

The mist scattered in the resulting wind, but Uriel paid it no heed, she flicked back her hair out of annoyance as it waved before her eyes, but nothing more.

These men, Gold Class soldiers numbering thirty in total, then raised their weapons and moved into the room. The mist began to settle again and concealed their forms completely.

The three Platinums of Jupiter entrusted their backs to each other in the face of this new threat. Their prince, Erus, could not help but find the situation daunting. He turned to face Mourn, who stood before him holding an Ash formed morningstar, and could do nothing more than ready himself for battle.

The two men exchanged no words nor fanfare, they simply and swiftly charged one another. Mourn struck first, swinging down his morningstar. Erus’s shield absorbed the impact but it still ended up slamming him through the nearest wall, such was the force of their clash.

The prince recovered quickly and readied his stance as if nothing had happened. He was confident he could take Mourn down, it wouldn’t take long, after that he could get his men out of this situation. That’s what he thought, at least right up until this moment.

Then Erus watched as Mourn stepped through the mist; a thick hide of scaled, sapphire blue armour covered every ounce of his naked flesh. That form was familiar to all of the men who knew of Avance, of Mourn’s father.

This technique granted the ability for a Platinum Class shape shifter to transform their flesh into the hide of a dragon. This hide was all but immune to fire and it was highly resistant to all forms of impact, it was extremely troublesome to overcome, far too troublesome under these current circumstances.

“I am, if nothing else, still my father’s son, you know?” Mourn said coldly as he leapt forward.

“That’s it, we’re gone!” Erus roared as he was, once again, sent flying into the nearest wall. However, this time it was deliberate, the prince even parted his feet from the ground as he allowed himself to be sent flying. This act allowed him to borrow Mourn’s brute strength and launch himself outside of the very building itself.

The situation had gone too far south from the moment Mourn’s power had been revealed, that girl next to him wasn’t the least bit weaker than him but if it had been only her then Erus still felt they might’ve had a chance.

The prince let himself tumble down a full two floors and crashed into the ground below. His body was tough however and he rose to his feet in an instant.

With fury he turned back to face the building he’d just fallen from as two of the three Platinum Class men that had gone inside with him landed down beside him. He raised his head as the last of them, the third of his men, lay pinned to the ground by one of the lances held by Mourn's soldiers.

Erus clenched his fists, he had now lost not one but two of his lieutenants this day. He and Mourn locked eyes but only for a moment before the former swallowed his pride and turned away.

_______________________________________________

Mourn stood before the open wall and watched Erus depart with a gaze. His armoured hide returned to normal in the next instant. He chided himself for allowing the prince to survive, but he could not be too mad, that was simply the quality of the man that he’d made into his enemy.

“We’re letting him go?” Uriel asked as she advanced through the fading mist. She was sweating, albeit only a little, due to the fragility of her body and the extensive use of her power.

“His army will not be far, we cannot chase him,” Mourn said as he passed her by. Uriel said nothing but even that silence was a form of disagreement. She was unwilling to just let the man get away.

“If you hadn’t-” She started to say, but the man swiftly silenced her.

“Do you have something to say to me?” His tone was cold, unforgiving, Uriel briefly couldn’t find it in herself to chastise him. She hated how he wanted to shut her up, even though she was right in that the fault was his.

Mourn himself knew it too, and he hated that the fault was his, he was busy enough dealing with that internally and was in no mood to be reminded of it however.

He himself chose not to remind Uriel of the fact that she’d claimed she could kill Erus easily before all this started.

“Why were your attacks so far off the mark?” He asked. Uriel clenched her knuckles tightly, but she answered him regardless.

“The memories I inherited include muscle memory, but my body isn’t yet suited to what those memories are demanding,” She confessed. Mourn stared at her blankly for a time. The heavy breath, the sweat dripping from her brow, all these signs of fatigue after so little time. She was strong, sure, but it meant nothing if she couldn’t endure her own abilities.

“I cannot trust you in battle anymore,” He said flat out. The girl glared at him, she could kill him in an instant, at least, she thought she could, but that dragonhide of his, when he used it, might well prove her wrong. She could only turn away with a cold snort to express her discontent.

“In the end, you’re just a child,” Mourn said with a sigh. That made him think to ask her. “What of Metatron? Can he do as you do?” Indeed, if Uriel’s weakness was her childish body, then what of the adult Metatron, how strong was he? Mourn begrudged trusting that man, but if he could fight with techniques like what this girl had shown before, he would have to.

“No,” Uriel replied, “Metatron has already passed his memories on, including the muscle memory, to his heir.” Mourn turned to face her, he could see she wasn’t lying. He couldn’t help but realise that this alliance had afforded him a pair of defective aces; one who couldn’t use her powers and another who’d been crippled when he lost them.

“Let’s go,” Mourn said as he turned away from the shattered wall. Uriel silently turned to follow him, albeit still with a frown upon her face. They left to follow their comrades, find their army, and prepare for what was to come.

_______________________________________________

Erus arrived before his army smeared in blood and out of breath. Two of the comrades he had brought with him were dead, his pride was dented and his rage was at a boiling point.

He turned to face the city, now fully confident that it was abandoned of all but those few people who had confronted him. He faced his men and gave them their order.

“Seize the city.”

Thus they marched. Every gate, every street, every building was soon flooded with their ranks. They found no one, sure enough, not a single person anywhere.

Furthermore the mines had been sealed by debris that would take significant time and effort to clear. The only people they found at all were in the prison and from their stories Erus learned the truth of it.

The Prince learned that everyone in this city now were only those who oposed Mourn's goals together with their families, one final act of compassion and mercy.

The rest were long gone, an army of several thousand men and their families.

This even Jupiter could not afford to ignore.

They were at war.